Recent research has found that encouragement of smiling on the part of an individual, even involuntarily smiling not in response to a happy event, may have a beneficial effect on the overall mood of the individual. The following references include descriptions background material regarding this phenomenon. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/isnt-what-i-expected/201207/try-some-smile-therapy describes that when a person is forced to smile, the perceive things as funnier, and that smiling can positively affect the mood of the person. http://smiletherapy.com/ suggest a method for setting an alarm, and smiling for one minute when the alarm sounds. http://www.anxietyguru.net/how-smiling-can-help-your-anxiety/ postulates that smiling can help one with their anxiety. http://lifeisnowblog.blogspot.fr/2009/06/faking-it-smile-therapy.html describes how happy behaviors, such as smiling, can foster happy feelings. While these sources describe the benefit of smiling, and one even suggests setting an alarm to provide a time to smile, there are no methods or apparatuses provided that provide a live feedback mechanism to monitor the benefits of smile or other emotional therapy to aid in performing and managing such therapy. There is further no interactive feedback system that monitors and encourages quality of smile therapy.
Thus, while these articles describe a desire to have people smile, there is no method presented for accurately tracking and encouraging the following of a proper protocol for smiling. Furthermore, there is no more general system for tracking and encouraging positive mood changes, and negating negative ones. Finally, there is no system providing feedback based upon a determined level of mood changes and/or smiling, and encouraging different or changes to activity based upon this feedback. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an apparatus that overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art.